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Old 02-17-2017, 01:43 PM   #95 (permalink)
stoatwblr
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I'll stay away from the engine and drivetrain, except to note that for all the naysaying, Cummins and the other makers all produce heavy engines which are generally as optimally tuned for fuel consumption as they can get and still stay within emissions regulations. Trying to feed them with alternative fuels is usually counterproductive.

That said, if you move from external belts to a more-electric environment you might get a couple of percent.

Aero is one of your big wins, especially if you concentrate on smoothing the blunt front and the vortex-inducing rear as well as the underside but without rigorous A-B-A testing over long periods to remove driver bias in short tests it can be hard to quantify.

I'll add to the comments about wheels and moondiscs with this caveat - spray.

It's not uncommon for heavy vehicle aero "improvements" to make spray throw significantly worse on heavy vehicles. When you do test, please pay attention to where the water's going during wet conditions.

Something to consider if it's not fitted already is an exhaust heat recovery system - with appropriate plumbing and controls this can be used to achieve faster system warmup, then might be used to drive a separate stirling-based electrical generation system to feed your accessories. You might find you can practically deploy an ammonia adsorbtion cooler for the cab or reefers too. No matter how much you improve the aero or drivetrain friction, there's pretty much always 50-100kW of energy going out the exhaust on a longhaul rig, if you can find a practical (cost-effective) way to harness it.
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